LAURA:  A JOURNEY INTO THE CRYSTAL

George Sand  (1804-1876)

Uncle Tungstenius owns and operates a natural history museum.  His nephew, Alexius Hartz, works for him, taking care of the exhibits and dealing with customers.  One day his cousin Laura came to visit. She expressed pity that a nice young man like Alexius hasn't achieved more in his nineteen years.  So he goes back to school to study mineralogy, then returns to the museum and meets Walter, another cousin, who is a rabid promoter of the coal industry.  While they are arguing about the importance of their individual interests, Laura pays another visit and inspires love in the heart of Alexis.  The two find themselves alone near the display cases one day and talk about rocks.  Alexis enters a sort of dream state in which he imagines himself and Laura being magically swept into a large geode.  They had been talking about the minerals that constituted the exhibits:  zirconium, jasper, chalcedony, beryl, sapphire, pyromorphite, labradorite, aventurine, gypsum, etc. and all of a sudden they found themselves surrounded by giant crystal peaks and spires.  They climb the largest edifice in the immediate neighborhood and gaze in wonder at the colors and flashing lights surrounding them.  All of a sudden there's an explosion and a brilliant flash of light and Alexius wakes up on the floor of the museum, having apparently fallen into one of the glass display cabinets and cut himself.

Laura leaves soon after and Alexius travels to the Tyrol mountains to study the mineralogy or the area.  Two years later he returns to the museum and finds Laura again.  She is engaged to Walter but doesn't love him.  She gives Alexius a magic ring which carries him back to the crystal world he'd previously gone to with Laura, and where she tells him she loves only him, not Walter.  Laura says that there are two sides to every person, the mundane and the spiritual, the physical body being the mere shadow of the spiritual, which encompasses the entire realm of time and space.

Laura's father, Naias, appears and interests Alexius in traveling to the inside of the planet Earth to find rare minerals and crystals to sell and make themselves rich.  Naias is a world traveler and jewel seller, and is familiar with mysterious, unknown regions in obscure corners of the planet.  Alexius agrees to accompany him and they set off for northern Greenland, where they hire Eskimos and sledges with which to make their way over the ice.  After an arduous trek, they reach a warm ocean near the North Pole, and, leaving the Eskimos behind, set out by themselves in a canoe, intent on discovering an entrance to the lower world and its wealth.  Days pass and a giant crystal mountain appears on the horizon, ten thousand feet higher than Mt. Everest.  They approach another coast, surrounded by enormous tourmaline crystals lying on their sides with the sharp ends pointing out to sea.  Fortunately they run upon a small beach and manage to land the canoe on the narrow, rocky shore.  After scouting around they happen upon a path through the cliff and find a vast expanse of grassland filled with prehistoric animals.  Giant bears, bison, goats, and aurochs are visible.  Huge beetles like flying buffalo pass overhead and the two travelers manage to lasso a couple of them.  They climb aboard and sail grandly over the lea until they get caught in an enormous monkey puzzle tree.  Continuing on, thornfully, they dine on thistles and caterpillars while lolling about on twenty foot long turtles.  Giant frogs sing to them.

They reach the giant peak at last, only to find that it's surrounded by a large lake with a 5,000 foot high waterfall.  But the lake is not water, it's a lava plain, with pumice seracs and erratic boulders lying around.  Approaching the mountain, they see that the plain descends into unlit depths.  Naias makes a rope out of vetch roots and begins to swing himself down into a sort of lava pit.  Alexius follows and they fall into an ash bed and forge their way across it toward the base of the peak, which, they see, is actually a giant olivine crystal.  The next day, after dining on vetch, they come to the edge of the lava plain and stare down into a vast opening below the mountain.  Immense crystals clog the sides of the seemingly limitless gorge:  Amethyst, ruby, beryl, sapphire, diamond and calcite crystals plus thousands of others, previously unnamed.  It seems, indeed, that the interior of the earth is decorated dwith crystals, like a geode.  Naias gets excited and leaps into the abyss.  Laura appears and, taking Alexius by the hand, leads him down into what turns into the garden behind the museum.  After a period of recuperation, Alexius realizes that it was all a dream, and that Naias never existed.  Laura's real father was a fat, jolly merchant, Christophe by name, who immediately consents to their marriage.  Alexius gives him a large diamond from his polar expedition, but Laura breaks it, demonstrating that it was merely a decorative adornment from a nearby newel post.  The enchantment is broken at last, and Alexius becomes a geology professor and he and Laura have two children.  Due to insufficient remuneration, Alexius becomes a gem dealer and they all live happily ever after.

Ms. Sand was evidently quite interested in crystallomancy, the practice of gazing into the depths of crystals in order to visit the world of the spirit.  There's quite a history of people doing this, the most famous of which might have been Dr. Dee in the 16th C. who claimed to see angels in his vision quests.  Self hypnosis of some sort seems to have played a role in similar experiences throughout history.  George Sand was an interesting author who led an unusual life, with many lovers and marriages and she wrote a lot of books.  She was also the girl-friend of Frederic Chopin for nine years, during which time she nursed him and tried to alleviate his tuberculosis.  Later she retired to her mansion in central France, where she reigned as a famous and well-regarded figure right up to her final demise.  This was a quite magnetic novel, especially for those interested in geology.  It was a surprising discovery, as Sand, so far as i'm aware, was not noted for her interest in the sciences.  But the text showed that she had researched mineralogy at least to a minor extent, and that she used what she learned in an accurate and well-reasoned manner.  I liked it.